Metacritic posted its Best-Reviewed Movies of the Decade list today. And their Worst.

The criticism-compilation site also breaks the top-reviewed films down by genre.

There’s plenty to quibble with, but the compilation does provide a nice reminder of some of the forgotten gems nestled into these overwrought Oughts. To wit: “Grizzly Man,” “In the Bedroom” and “You Can Count on Me.”

“Pan’s Labyrinth,” “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and “Ratatouille“ took the top three spots.

And something called “The Singing Forest,” from 2003, topped the Worst list, somehow besting “The Hottie and the Nottie.” Well, actually, once you watch the trailer it becomes clearer:

Do you see anything missing from either list?

It was a good day for Little Miss Sunshine and Half Nelson at Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards. Little Miss Sunshine won four and Half Nelson won two awards. Here are ten things I learned at the big tent by the Santa Monica beach today:

1. Academy Awards producer Laura Ziskin will allow all five producers to come onstage to accept the Oscar, Fox Searchlight confirmed today. When Little Miss Sunshine won the best feature award Saturday afternoon, the three producers who had been given the green light by the Academy graciously allowed the two who weren’t, Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger, to say their thanks first. Michael Arndt also won for best first screenplay, Alan Arkin won for best supporting actor and Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton won for directing. “We were dead in the studio system,” said Dayton. “Thankfully people in the independent world stuck with us. We’re grateful to our five producers—”All five,” chimed in Faris—for sticking with us.”

2. Several people said they were relieved to hear that Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin wasn’t in the tent, because host Sarah Silverman, wearing a short school girl outfit, was fairly X-rated—she started out comparing the Indie Spirits to the Adult Film Awards and performed one skit about fucking her favorite bag of cheese. At the IFC Party afterwards at Shutters on the Beach, John Waters praised her: “She did a good job.” As far as I was concerned he got the biggest laugh of the night when he came out wearing a chain like Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan and said, “never waste a good prop. I wouldn’t mind if Samuel L. Jackson chained me to a radiator.” (He presented best screenplay to Jason Reitman for Thank You For Smoking.)

3. I’m going to lose my office Oscar pool. The consensus seemed to be that The Lives of Others would beat Pan’s Labyrinth for Best Foreign Film. Everyone agrees that Pan should win art direction and makeup. On the Oscar ballot, the Best Score category doesn’t show the name of the composer. Babel could win, but if people remember that Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla won last year for Brokeback Mountain, it could also go to Alexandre Desplat for The Queen. I went to a lunch on Friday at the French consulate for Desplat, an articulate man who also composed the excellent score for The Painted Veil. He’s moving on to score a studio fantasy, The Golden Compass.

4. Even Dreamgirls writer-director Bill Condon, who’s working on staging the three songs for Dreamgirls at the Oscars, is worried that they may have cancelled each other out. If everyone knew that the Beyonce Knowles song was Listen, they might vote for it, but it’s not clear on the Oscar ballot. Which means that all these people who’ve been telling me they voted for Melissa Etheridge for An Inconvenient Truth may have voted for the winner.

5. Michelle Williams has spunk! Nominated for a Best Actress Indie Spirit Award for the micro-budget Land of Plenty, Williams admitted that many people criticized her for flipping the bird from their vacation hotel balcony at the paparazzi who were harassing her and Heath Ledger. She said that she and Ledger tend to walk around with sulky scowls when the photogs lurk so that the pictures won’t get published. “They’re looking for photos that make us look like we’re living the happy life,” she said.

Also with her share of spunk is Williams’ fellow nominee, Amber Tamblyn (Stephanie Daley), who is clearly someone who stands up for herself. The two young women lost to veteran Frances McDormand for Friends with Money.

6. The LAT Calendar section is in a big fight with the Metro section, which ran a tough investigative piece Saturday by Paul Pringle, who does not cover the film beat, about Film Independent, which puts on the big Indie Spirits party every year. According to LAT critic Kenneth Turan, the story, which suggested that the organization doesn’t plow back enough of its revenues into programs and services, was not shown to the Calendar editors, who are furious. The story revealed that Film Independent president Dawn Hudson earns $265,000 a year, more than her counterparts at the American Film Institute and The American Cinematheque, which did set some tongues wagging inside the Spirits tent. However Hudson is a popular figure in the indie film community who has worked long and hard to support indie film. Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard said that he thought someone with a right-wing agenda was going after indie cinema with this piece. The news story manipulated statistics and a nonprofit effectiveness measuring stick to strange effect.

For one thing, the carpet being walked today by doc filmmakers such as A.J. Schnack and stars Sally Kellerman and Nev Campbell, who were participating in a Robert Altman tribute, was blue, not red. The 600 plus outlets covering the event ranged from the KABC, Reelz, Canal Plus and the IFC Channel to the New York Daily News, Elle.com, The TV Guide Channel and BBC News. Was it a bad thing that indie films were being promoted around the world?

The people attending this event included “the best of the best of indie filmmakers in Hollywood,” said Silverman. “If a bomb went off,” she added, “there’d be nobody left to make a doc about it.” Many of the filmmakers during the awards show went out of their way to thank Film Independent for supporting indie film. “Many of us feel this Spirit Award is the highest honor in America today and never more than today,” said Little Miss Sunshine producer Ron Yerxa.

7. Jack Lechner, the lyricist for the song spoofs that were the highlight of the event, is slowly getting close to mounting a musical in New York. Minnie Driver performed a country take-off on Pan’s Labyrinth. Loretta Devine really scored with “Beauty Is Deceased,” about The Dead Girl. Taylor Dane kicked up her heels country style with “Screwed Up Family,” about Little Miss Sunshine, to the tune of “We Are Family.” Rosario Dawson delivered “The Crack-Head Teacher Man,” off Half Nelson.

8. David Lynch is just as strange as we think he is. To promote his digital micro-budget movie Inland Empire, Laura Dern reminded as she accepted Lynch’s Special Distinction Award from Dennis Hopper, Lynch set himself up on Hollywood Boulevard with a megaphone and a cow on a leash. Hopper described working on a Lynch movie as “surreal.” After a good take on Blue Velvet, Lynch would say: “Solid gold! Peachy keen! Let’s do one more!”

9. Robert Altman liked to torture his actors, but they loved him anyway. When he didn’t like a take, Robert Downey, Jr. recalled, he said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” And when he was pleased, he said, “That was absolutely adequate, let’s move on.” Film Independent established a new ensemble acting award named after Altman.

10. As usual, German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck cut to the chase when he advised up-and-coming filmmakers, while accepting his award for best foreign film for The Lives of Others, “Follow your own voice. Don’t make a film by committee. There’s a simple way to get that done: downscale the budget. When you work on a small budget the people you are working with are not in it for the money. They’re fine with being exploited as long as you’re exploiting yourself.”

Guillermo Navarro, accepting the best cinematography prize for Pan’s Labyrinth, praised director Guillermo del Toro for “being incredibly stubborn,” he said. “This movie was in the hands of the filmmakers, and that’s what made all the difference.”

For their 11th annual Art Directors Guild Awards dinner, the ADG decorated the Beverly Hilton international ballroom like a 30s supper club, complete with floating candles, red columns, white flowers and tape measures as table favors. During the black tie dinner, Johnny Crawford’s swinging orchestra played old Irving Berlin standards like “Isn’t This a Lovely Day.”

The evening’s host, “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” star Steven Weber, tried to get some chuckles out of pretending that he was at an Adult Film Awards show. Charles Durning did wring some guffaws out of a tired bestiality joke. And while presenter Annette Bening gamely worked her way through a tongue-twisting list of global names, Jon Voight managed to offend every Asian in the room as he mangled the eventual winners for the year’s best period film, Curse of the Golden Flower. (Pan’s Labyrinth won best fantasy film and Casino Royale took the contemporary honors.)

Warren Beatty was as charming as ever as he praised lifetime achievement award winner Dean Tavoularis as “one of the greatest production designers in the history of time”—who in turn thanked Beatty for giving him his first job as a designer on Bonnie and Clyde. The veteran production designer, who received a warm standing ovation from his peers, also thanked “the dreaded” Francis Ford Coppola, his early mentors at Disney studios, and his brother Alex Tavoularis.

Director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Time Bandits, The Fisher King), accepting his first-ever Hollywood award, for outstanding contribution to cinematic imagery, was moved by a series of vintage clips from the films of noted production designers being inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame, which included stunning work by Hilyard Brown (Cleopatra), Carroll Clark (King Kong), Stephen Goosson (Lost Horizon), Harry Horner (The Heiress), and the late great Henry Bumstead, who died last May having just designed Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima at age 91, films 102 and 103 in a career lasting 70 years. (Eastwood sent a note explaining that only the opening of Iwo Jima in Berlin prevented him from attending.) “The worlds they created were so wondrous,” Gilliam said. “Not so many people are allowed to do that now, to create worlds so magical. I’m one of the lucky ones to slip through the net and do it…I’m still trying to make movies that don’t depend on the computer to do it.” Gilliam held up his fingers. “The digital world that I have are these digits that make things and build things. Let’s keep doing great work.”

The art directors loved that.

Oscar clues? More support for Pan’s Labyrinth: it could win in this Oscar category.

A list of winners in all categories follows.

I’m going to watch the BAFTA show on BBC America today, even if Stephen Frye isn’t the host. But for those of you who want to know who already won their BAFTA awards, here are the gory details. Suffice it to say that Guillermo del Toro and distributor Picturehouse are having a good day. (Pan’s Labyrinth should easily pass $30 million domestically.)

Actually, Picturehouse president Bob Berney’s also in a good mood because his Edith Piaf biopic pick-up, La Mome, or La Vie en Rose, is getting great advance buzz and reviews out of Berlin and <a href="Paris.

Here’s a French TV clip of singer Jennifer and actress Marion Cotillard:

And here’s a trailer for the movie. It just premiered, and opens in France February 14, Quebec, Canada March 6 and stateside June 8.

Fans of “Pan’s Labyrinth” or the rest of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s films will want to tune in to “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC Friday night, as Del Toro is scheduled to appear.

Picturehouse (Pan’s Labyrinth), Universal (Children of Men) and Paramount Vantage (Babel) threw a joint party Wednesday night at Simon’s at The Sofitel to celebrate their three Oscar contenders Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. It was the most fun I’ve had in ages. Great piles of sushi and seafood. Circulating platters of red and white wine. Mariaches. Cool directors. I introduced genial Happy Feet director George Miller (who is plotting another animated film) to DGA winner Walter Hill (Broken Trail), who is plotting a western series for AMC. Ian McShane admitted that he was as bored as he looked at the SAG Awards, and told us he’s trodding the boards on Broadway in Howard Pinter’s The Homecoming. That should keep him amused.

Gonzalez Inarritu regaled us with stories of his early days in 80s radio, when he got to do whatever he wanted for three hours a day. That explains a good deal. He has a great supple voice and tells colorful stories really well. Then he did interstitials for TV, like MTV spots. That explains how inventive and playful he is. He and Del Toro made a brief speech, explaining that Cuaron and his family were stuck in London with the flu. It was unusual to see three guest lists mingling—and it was great. Universal’s Marc Shmuger talked to Vantage’s John Lesher. Del Toro is multi-tasking as usual, writing one script while he promotes Pan’s Labyrinth and preps the next Hellboy installment.

HBO honcho Chris Albrecht admitted that they’ve torn down the costly Italian sets for Rome, so this season is it. The series has done about as well as Deadwood. Hmmm. I love Rome, even when it goes wildly over the top.

Babel producers Steve Golin and John Kilik are in giddy moods; Kilik is back from Paris where Julian Schnabel has directed his first film in 8 years, since Before Nightfall, Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) in French. It’s the story of Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, after suffering a paralytic stroke, used his left eye to blink out his memoir. They hope to present the movie, if the Gods are willing, in Cannes.

As I waited for my Honda, Curtis Hanson and Rebecca Yeldham took off in a splendidly over-sized vintage white car with massive fins.
[Photo by Jeffrey Wells]

Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron (left) makes a plea for cinema without borders.

At the L.A. celebration Wednesday night for the three Oscar-nominated Mexican filmmakers, Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guillermo Del Toro, Cuaron regretfully won’t be there. He’s stuck in London with the flu, along with his family.

Meanwhile, the boxoffice on the three films is as follows:

Babel: $30 million (cost $20 million), hanging in for Oscar night
Pan’s Labyrinth: $22 million (cost $16 million) , steady as she goes
Children of Men: $32 million (cost $90 million), on its way out of wide release

You have to hand it to hard-working AP scribe Dave Germain: he had the first Oscar noms story up this morning. Like Gregg, Nicole and me, he’s been covering Sundance and now has to do a day of Oscar reporting. I’ve already spoken to happy nominee Mark Wahlberg this morning—”now my parents can call me a professional actor,” he said. “I’m so fortunate.”

Here’s the complete list of nominations

Even with eight nominations, Dreamgirls’ showing is a disappointment for Paramount/Dreamworks, even if Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy and a host of technical nods went their way. Not scoring best picture, director or writer is a huge blow and a surprise, although enthusiasm for the film was lagging with its boxoffice. Finally, even though Bill Condon mounted a smart and great-looking movie with many strong performances, somehow Dreamgirls failed to rouse big emotions. I suspect the original material is the underlying issue here. It’s hard to imagine a better movie being made from that musical.

The happy camper this morning–along with the folks behind Babel, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine and Borat, which nabbed a surprise adapted screenplay nomination, is Clint Eastwood, whose Letters from Iwo Jima pushed Dreamgirls out of the best picture race. Interestingly, while Eastwood was nominated for directing Letters, the film did not get any acting nods, so it has to be considered a weak best picture contender. Letters had a total of four nominations, while its competitors Babel had seven, Little Miss Sunshine had four (though not directing, United 93’s Paul Greengrass sqeaked in there), The Departed had five, and The Queen had six.

In the end, the move to put Letters out at year’s end paid off handsomely, as Eastwood’s star power and critics’ raves turned what might have been a difficult-to-watch foreign language war film into a must-see. Eastwood knows what he’s doing, and the Warners Oscar strategy that was criticized for pushing Blood Diamond over The Departed paid off for both. The actors branch gave DiCaprio his due for his meaty Blood Diamond performance rather than The Departed. (He must have gotten many votes for both films, and wound up not losing altogether.) Djimon Hounsou was also rewarded for his powerfully moving Blood Diamond role.

While it might seem that Sony Pictures Classics would be crying over Volver being shut out of the foreign language final five, truth is, the Best Actress nomination for Penelope Cruz will generate more boxoffice as the film goes into wider release on 700 screens, the most for any Pedro Almodovar film, says SPC’s Michael Barker. Their Lives of Others is a strong candidate for the win—although Pan’s Labyrinth, which scored six nominations today, will also get some traction there and may have been more widely seen. The trick with the foreign films is that only the Oscar voters who have seen all five films get to vote. So some of the films—like After the Wedding–that haven’t been widely seen gain a bizarre advantage.

Finally it’s a wide open race. But my money for best picture is on Little Miss Sunshine. WHY? It’s the little best picture that could. And it’s beloved.

I didn’t do so badly picking the foreign selections. Sony Pictures Classics’s Michael Barker warned me to expect Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, a movie I suspect will not make the final five, on the short list. My reason: it’s offensive, basically. It’s a commercially entertaining movie about the Holocaust that makes any number of errors in judgment. I went to see it because there were so many divergent views on it out of Toronto. People I respect liked it a lot. But a handsome Nazi as a leading man? (Even if he is played by gorgeous Lives of Others star Sebastian Koch, who was wandering around the Globes parties last night.) I don’t think so. The SPC movie that didn’t make it was Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, which may still turn up in the costume design category.

So here’s the final nine, from my story in THR:

Nine of 61 films that originally qualified for consideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the foreign-language film Oscar have advanced to the final voting phase. The rules for the category changed this year. Instead of several hundred members of the foreign-language film committee selecting the five nominees, this year — during what the Academy calls Phase I — their ballots selected nine finalists for nomination.

A Phase II committee of 30, comprised of 10 randomly selected members of the larger group and two 10-member contingents from New York and Los Angeles, will choose the final five nominees.
The films are Algeria’s Days of Glory, directed by Rachid Bouchareb (distributed by the Weinstein Co.); Canada’s Water, by Deepa Mehta (Fox Searchlight); Denmark’s After the Wedding, by Susanne Bier (IFC Films); France’s Avenue Montaigne, by Daniele Thompson (ThinkFilm); Germany’s The Lives of Others, by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Sony Pictures Classics); Mexico’s Pan’s Labyrinth, by Guillermo del Toro (Picturehouse); the Netherlands’ Black Book, by Paul Verhoeven (SPC); Spain’s Volver, directed by Pedro Almodovar (SPC); and Switzerland’s Vitus, by Fredi M. Murer (SPC).

Screenings for Phase II will be held Friday-Sunday in New York and Los Angeles. The nominations for the 79th Annual Academy Awards will be announced Tuesday at 5:30 a.m. PST. The Oscars will be held Feb. 25 at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland.

Given that the completed ballots from the 5,830 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are due in the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers no later than 5 PM on Saturday, January 13, these BAFTA nominations (like Monday’s Golden Globe Awards), won’t have any impact on the Oscar nominations; those results will be announced on Tuesday, January 23. (The 79th Academy Awards for 2006 will be presented on Sunday, February 25.) The BAFTAS will contribute continuing momentum for the eventual Oscar nominees.

Here’s the BAFTA report from THR’s London bureau chief, Stuart Kemp:

The foreign film race has never been stronger than it is this year. Here’s my latest sense of the top Oscar contenders based on festival buzz, reviews and feedback from insiders on the foreign film committee:

Three should definitely make it: The Lives of Others, Germany, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (Sony Pictures Classics), Pan’s Labyrinth, Mexico, Guillermo del Toro (Picturehouse), and Volver, Spain, Pedro Almodovar (SPC). Also playing well are Indigenes, Algeria, Rachid Bouchared (Weinstein Co.), Water, Canada, Deepa Mehta (Fox Searchlight, on DVD), Curse of the Golden Flower, China, Zhang Yimou (SPC), After the Wedding, Denmark, Susanne Bier (IFC Films), Vitus, Switzerland, Fredi Murer (no distrib), The Golden Door, Italy, Emanuele Crialiese (Miramax Films), Avenue Montaigne, France, Daniele Thompson (Thinkfilm), Sweet Mud, Israel, Dror Shaul (no distrib), and Ten Canoes, Australia, Rolf de Heer (Palm Pictures).

This Oscar site has everything you’ve ever wanted to know about all 61 films that have been submitted for foreign film Oscar consideration so far.

The National Society of Film Critics is reflecting the late-surging momentum for Pan’s Labyrinth, and continuing to show the love to United 93. Here’s The Envelope’s blow-by-blow on how the voting went down. And here’s Gregg Kilday’s THR story:

Guillermo Del Toro’s imaginative fable “Pan’s Labyrinth” was voted best picture of 2006 by the National Society of Film Critics at the group’s annual meeting at Sardi’s Restaurant in New York City on Saturday.

The Spanish-language film, a Picturehouse release, prevailed in the voting over Christi Puiu’s “Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” which came in second, and Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima,” which placed third. Del Toro did not receive best director honors, however. That distinction went to Paul Greengrass, for helming the docudrama “United 93.” Del Toro and “The Departed’s” Martin Scorsese tied for second place.

The society of 58 critics from around the country, who dedicated this year’s awards to the memory of the late Robert Altman, named Forest Whitaker best actor for “The Last King of Scotland.” But Whitaker eked out that victory only after an extra tie-breaking vote, which left Peter O’Toole in second place for “Venus,” followed by Ryan Gosling for “Half Nelson.”

Echoing many other critics’ groups, the National Society decided that Helen Mirren was its choice as best actress for “The Queen.” Laura Dern ranked second for “Inland Empire,” followed by Judi Dench for “Notes on a Scandal.”

Mark Wahlberg earned best supporting actor honors for his cop in “The Departed,” with Jackie Earle Haley (“Little Children”) and Alan Arkin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) as the runners-up.

Meryl Streep was hailed as best supporting actress for her performances in both “A Prairie Home Companion” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” Runners-up were Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”) and Shareeka Epps (“Half Nelson”).